ABSTRACT
There was a wide range of gender identities among the author friends. Several were pre-op transsexuals, others, like Ivy, never wanted to be women but were into the act of glamour, the fashion. On Monday nights the queens got into full drag for the Beauty Parade where Boston's legendary M.C., Sylvia Sydney, addressed the audience while the queens modelled and a jury awarded trophies to the most glamorous contestants. To survive, some of the queens collected welfare, some turned tricks, others sewed costumes for each other or sold antique clothes they found at thriftshops. The queens were beautiful, the shows were lavish productions with numerous costumes. The pictures in the book are not of people suffering gender dysphoria but rather expressing gender euphoria. The people in the pictures are truly revolutionary; they are the real winners of the battle of the sexes because they stepped out of the ring.
